Last week we did a
round-up
of leading technology-focused sites that have covered RECAP. Now, it
seems that news of RECAP is spreading beyond the “tech blogosphere,” as
more mainstream publications have begun writing about our software.
Foreign Policy‘s Evgeny Morozov
coveredRECAP, calling it “smart and subversive.” On Wednesday NextGov, a
National Journal publication widely read within the government IT
community, ran a thorough write-up of
RECAP
by Aliya Sternstein. It included some good background on how RECAP fits
into the larger debate about judicial transparency.

With the possible exception of the ever-leaky CIA, no aspect of
government remains more locked down than the secretive, hierarchical
judicial branch. Digital records of court filings, briefs and
transcripts sit behind paywalls like Lexis and Westlaw. Legal codes
and judicial documents aren’t copyrighted, but governments often cut
exclusive distribution deals, rendering other access methods a bit
legally questionable. Supreme Court decisions are easy to get, but the
briefs and decisions of lower courts can be hard to come by.

Last week, a team from Princeton’s Center for Information Technology
Policy took a pot shot at legal secrecy, setting in motion a scheme to
filch protected judicial records and make them available for free
online. One of the developers, Harvard’s Stephen Schultze, says he
went digging for some First Amendment precedent last fall and was
shocked by the outdated technology he found. Knowing that “there’s a
certain geek cache to openness projects these days,” Mr. Schultze and
Princeton computer science grad students Tim Lee and Harlan Yu went
straight to work.